A recently revised complaint in Wendy Williams’ lawsuit against Lifetime parent company A+E Networks over the release of a documentary chronicling her deteriorating mental and physical state seeks to use all profits from the project to fund her medical care.
The amended complaint, filed Sept. 16 in New York County Superior Court, says Williams received about $82,000 for his participation in the project, which documented his life for the better part of a year and showed his downward spiral as he struggled with family, fame and excessive drinking. It names Lifetime Entertainment Services, Creature Films and producer Mark Ford as defendants in the case, along with A&E and EOne Productions.
“This is a paltry sum for the use of highly invasive and humiliating footage of her in the confused convulsions of dementia, while the defendants, who profited from the streaming of the program, have likely already made millions,” the complaint states.
In March, Sabrina Morrissey, acting in her capacity as Williams’ temporary guardian, filed a lawsuit against A+E Networks. She argued that the contract the company had brokered to make the documentary was invalid because Williams did not have the legal or mental capacity to authorize her participation in the title at the time. She was allegedly told the film would be “positive and beneficial” to her image.
The lawsuit was part of a legal battle initiated by Morrissey seeking to block the documentary from being released. A temporary restraining order was granted before the ruling was overturned by a higher court. Roberta Kaplan, who represented E. Jean Carroll in a defamation case against former President Donald Trump, has since joined Williams' legal team, which includes Ellen Holloman.
In a statement on the amended complaint, Kaplan said the defendants “viciously and shamelessly exploited Wendy Williams for their own profit while she was clearly incapacitated and suffering from dementia.”
The new filing alleges that Will Selby, Williams' former manager, arranged for the former talk show host to appear in the documentary. In response to concerns, he told Morrissey that the title would focus on Williams' triumphant return to the media and that he would have full creative control. When asked what that meant, he said, “If I don't want it in the film, they'll take it out.”
Similar statements were made to EOne’s attorneys, according to the complaint. The company, along with Ford, Creature Films and A&E, then drafted a supposedly one-sided talent agreement for the filming, Morrissey alleges. “This agreement was submitted after WWH had already been filmed by Defendants while she was clearly disheveled, mentally impaired and confused,” the filing states. “No person who witnessed WWH under these circumstances could have believed that she was capable of agreeing to a filming agreement, or to the filming itself.”
During this time, Williams began receiving around-the-clock care. Morrissey refused to allow the documentary team access to film additional footage. He assumed the project was dead, as no contract was ever finalized.
But in February, A&E released a promotional trailer for the project. The lawsuit criticizes the filmmakers for portraying Williams as a “laughing drunk, implicitly responsible for her own continued suffering” by including unflattering footage, such as photographs of her without a wig and nearly bald.
Morrissey “was astonished and horrified by this, as [Williams] insists on wearing a wig for all meetings and would never, ever consent to and allow herself to be filmed for the public without the wig for public consumption,” the complaint reads.
The controversial 4 1/2-hour documentary, which features nearly seven months of footage from Williams’ tumultuous final years leading up to his admission to a mental health facility last year, aired in February to blistering ratings, averaging just over 1 million viewers over the two nights it aired. Lifetime said it was the biggest nonfiction debut in two years. Williams, his son, Kevin Hunter Jr., and Selby, his jeweler-turned-manager, are all credited as executive producers.